Top Stories of the Week: Wizards struggle to stay in playoff race, Mike Scott’s hot streak

Today’s Christmas Eve, and the Wizards head to Bean Town to play the Celtics tomorrow!

So let’s catch up on what happened in the past week.

The Wizards are struggling to stay in the playoff race

If you look at the Wizards’ record, they are above .500. But the more important thing is where they’re seeded in the East. On Saturday morning, they were 8th place:

The silver lining is that thee Wizards are in a pack of several teams that are anywhere from two to four games above .500, so seedings can change every day. But the bottom line is that the Wizards are underperforming, at least when you consider their preseason expectations.

Last Sunday, the Wizards lost to the Cavaliers, 106-99 in a game that they actually had a good chance of winning. LeBron James just had a triple double though. Then on Tuesday, the Wizards did beat the Pelicans, 116-106. On Thursday, the Wizards traveled to New York City for another match against the Nets and were run out of Long Island, 119-84. At least the Wizards bounced back in a big way on Saturday, as they blew out the Magic, 130-103.

Mike Scott is doing really, really well!

Scott is averaging 12.1 points a game and 62.6 percent shooting from the field in December. We wrote several pieces on him in the past week:

• Tony East detailed the salary cap implications keeping Scott has on the team.
• Kevin Parrish Jr. wrote about how even Scott is surprised by his performance this season.
• Alan Jenkins wrote something interesting about what the Wizards should do with Scott in the short term: they shouldn’t have him start over Markieff Morris.

Wizards and Mystics give back to the community

John Wall spent a lot of time giving back to the D.C. area community this past month. For example, he is paying school tuition for one DeMatha High School family.

And he also took part giving gifts to D.C. area families in a holiday gift drive with Elena Delle Donne, Bradley Beal, Natasha Cloud, Tim Frazier, Tayler Hill, Scott Brooks, the Wizard Girls, and Ernie Grunfeld:

Finally, Kelly Oubre also did some holiday giving of his own last week with his toy drive:

Wall gives back to his teammates too

Wall also gave each of his teammates a personalized Rolex watch for Christmas:

And more links

• Can we redo the summer of 2016 again?
• Scott Allen of The Washington Post wrote about LeBron James’ shoe choices during last Sunday’s game against the Cavaliers. James wore a black and white “equality” shoe, which isn’t a coincidence given his recent tweets criticizing President Donald Trump.
• Candace Buckner of The Washington Post also wrote about what many Wizards fans dreamed about since the NBA Draft ... in 2010. The possibility of DeMarcus Cousins coming to Washington. It’s gonna be hard for that to happen to say the least.
• John Schuhmann of NBA.com writes about Marcin Gortat’s biggest asset: his screen assists. In fact, he is leading the NBA in these types of plays per game, though you won’t find it on a box score.

Alright, that’s what I have from the past week. If there’s another link you’d like to share, feel free to do so in the comments or as a FanPost.

Have a safe and happy Christmas Eve.